My first iPad game: Stats and lessons | Hacker News Reader

My first iPad game: Stats and lessons

whatupdave.com

81 pointswhatupdave15 comments

Very insightful... More liked the point where you described how you had to start cutting down on stuff so that you get to release it.... I think deciding on one feature and one feature only, developing it and throwing it out to the world is a good idea most of the times :

1. Gives you an opportunity to test if people like what you have to offer

2. You have a ton of features lined up in your head but based on user feedback you would know how to prioritize them

Very cool. Am I the only one to like the original design better than the robot one?

There's a gigantic difference in sales potential when you choose to make an iPad game (like the author did) and an iPhone game. The iPhone & iPod touch market is way, WAY bigger and has a much larger financial upside. If you want to make a game that can reach the largest audience of buyers, make it for iPhone, or universal, but not iPad only. The title of the submission is misleading.

Thanks for pointing that out Mike, I've corrected the title.

You're right too, when I started development I'd just bought the iPad and there weren't a lot of quality games on the device. Especially games that weren't just scaled up iPhone games.

My reasoning was if I could get a decent game out in 3 months, even though there were less devices, I would have less competition for attention on the iPad.

While that might seem true, it's interesting how the web scene has played out.

When the iPod came out, there was an ecosystem of iPod-related websites that emerged that was distinct from the Apple/Mac web.

When the iPhone came out, another entire ecosystem developed. iPhone-specific sites. The existing iPod sites weren't the ones to gain popularity.

The iPad, however, didn't spawn a significant iPad-specific ecosystem of websites. Instead, it was absorbed within the Apple/iPhone sites, for whatever reason. As a result, I think iPad coverage is harder to come by and is a bit more mixed with everything else.

You think this is an underserved niche?

I don't. The lack of popular iPad-specific sites was not due to a lack of trying. There were several that tried. None of them gained a lot of traction.

The iPod and iPhone are two completely different worlds so it makes sense that you would see two groups of websites rise.

The iPhone and iPad are almost identical. There are plenty in the community who have made the divide between the products. Even if you can manage to get coverage on a site that blends iPhone/iPad coverage that is just fine (I've had this happen, sales went from around 40 to 180). I also consider it a huge benefit to get my brand in front of iPhone only users. It's likely that they'll know friends with an iPad and/or they may become a fan (fb, twitter, newsletter) in anticipation for an iPhone version.

iPhone and iPad coverage is hard in general. Getting my latest product out there has been a huge pain. Originally released on iPad, I had little coverage. I have yet to get coverage on the iPhone, though, it's still early. It's incredibly important that you spend time building relationships with editors, but that's far easier said than done.

If anybody else wants to play around with 3d game development turbosquid ( briefly mentioned in the article) is a great way to start.

If you can spare it, play around with blender for a week and you should be able to make simple models (ships, guns, etc) and tweak more complex ones.

As someone planning to build some iOS games as a side project, I really appreciate this info.

Some questions for you:

Have you considered offering your game for free for a limited time to get your game out there, so it can hopefully find some more coverage? If so, what made you decide to keep it a paid app?

Did you consider any other game dev tools, such as Unity?

Did you reach out at all to any mobile gaming sites or blogs to try to get coverage for your game? If so, did you have any luck?

Not sure about offering it for free, it's a possibility. I may try a lite version of some type. That worked for Trainyard.

I briefly looked at Unity and thought it looked great but more suited to 3d games. I thought I could move faster with cocos2d but I can't comment on how true that is.

BTW I decided on 2d for two reasons: 1. it's easier to develop 2. I haven't found any 3d games I like!

I also hit up a whole bunch of forums, emailed a stack of review sites, most of which didn't reply, or they were charging for reviews. I got that one review I linked to which was great. I'm most definitely not a marketing guru!

Not all games work well in the free model. You could kill your product by releasing a free version if you have wrong type of game. This, generally, is an advantage for puzzle games with interesting mechanics. It's also better to react with a lite version if you see initial success with your product. If you have something good you'll see a positive reaction, but if you're bouncing around 0-5 sales/day, early in the release, a lite version is probably not going to do much.

Ah, how I despised the PS2 DEV TOOL. The only cool thing about it was the look on people's faces when they'd see it...right out of that scene in Aliens when Ripley walks in on the Queen.

I got some peverse joy out of writing code that could chunk my 3d models, send them over the bus and coordinate the two co-processors. So many late nights....

The reference to Turbo Pascal brings back some highschool memories.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com